Sermon Tone Analysis

Anger Divine

Good morning,

Have you ever wondered

I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving.

I don’t get into the whole Black Friday tradition, however this year I met my son at 5:30 in the morning before work to help him get a new Pit boss grill.

For some it is the expectation and plans of the perfect meal, or gathering the family together, for others it is

As I walked into the store, it was already packed, the checkout line was so long, and I felt this anxiety begin to grow inside of me, especially because my cart seemed to be wider than the isles i was going down, and I thought what a great way to destroy that feeling of thankfulness that I had the day before.

This morning we are continuing our journey in the book of Romans but next week we begin our Christmas series called the light of the world, with the highlights of our children's program and having 2 Christmas Eve services .

Let’s pray as we open the Word of God

As you open your Bibles to Pastor Steve spoke the last couple of weeks about how the righteous live by faith, but I bet the thought never occured to you about how the rest of the world lives?

The remainder of chapter 1 reveals how God is going to deal with unrighteous and ungodly living, but I think we can still find hope because it is God’s Word.

The first question I think we need to ask is, who is the wrath of God aimed at?

The short answer is all of us because of our unrighteousness and ungodliness.

Pazstor Steve commented on the fall in the garden 2 weeks ago and how when Adam and Eve chose to eat of that which was forbidden that they were taking God away as the

As you read through the Bible it is pretty clear that God can’t stand sin and disobedience.

Since the fall in the garden, we see over and over how humanity always turns toward sin, and it takes an act by God to bring them back to Himself.

As you look at the Israelites, they are led into captivity over and over because of their sin, then there is a redeemer, a king or profit, who comes to rescue them and the whole process repeats itself again.

Sin, repent, and repeat.

They had a sin management problem, and so do we.

We cannot manage sin in our life we must destroy it.

God has had a plan to destroy sin from before creation, His name is Jesus!

The law only shows that we could never be good enough on our own and that humanity needed a Savior, or face the wrath of God for our unrighteousness and ungodliness .

Websters dictionary definition of wrath has 2 references to scripture in its definition.

1.

The just punishment of an offence or crime.

2. God’s wrath, in scripture is His holy and just indignation against sin.

Have you ever wondered what your greatest desire was?

John Bevere in his book titled, Killing Kryptonite makes this observation;

Our greatest desire is to be successful, to be the best in our field, to be popular, to be hapilly married, to enjoy great friendships, to be a part of a vibrant community, to enjoy good health, or to have enough resources to do anything we fancy.

Each of these is attractive and most are even necessary, but they do not identify our greatest desire.

We hear stories of people that have all these things but still live a life looking for something more.

He goes on to say; The true satisfaction that every man and woman longs for, whether they realize it or not, can only be found in an intimate relationship with our creator.

The reality is that God has “planted eternity in our heart” [].

Unless deception has gotten the upper hand on us, we instinctively long in our hearts for the King of eternity.

This brings us to the second part of verse 18,

ESV, For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

In order to suppress the truth, you must first know what that truth is.

Which also means that in order to suppress the truth, we must live in willful disobedience to that truth!

Jesus has a story that He tells about the chief priests and the elders when they challenged His authority.

Mathew 21:33-46 ESV.

There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country.

When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit.

And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.

Again he sent other servants, more than the first.

And they did the same to them.

Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’

But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir.

Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’

And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

“‘The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone;

this was the Lord's doing,

and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them.

They knew the truth and were withholding that truth, suppressing it from the people for fear that they might lose power and influence among the people.

Instead of repenting and saving themselves from the wrath of God, they chose temporary power and eternal destruction and killed the king of kings and Lord of Lords.

But then the thought occured to me, how often do we do the very same thing.

Recently as a staff we were discussing an article from life site news.com.

In this article a liberal Lutheran pastor makes the statement that its okay to look at porn as long as it is ethically sourced porn.

The article goes on to say, if we took shame out of the fact that people like to view exotic imagery, the compulsive behavior (shame) around consuming pornography would decrease.

How is that for suppressing the truth?

Rather than teaching about what the Bible says about holy living, why not just take the shame out of sinful living.

Romans 1:19

Pleasing the ears of others will always lead into the wrath of God.

Romans 1:19-20

You don’t have to look very hard to see the magnificent glory of Gods creation.

From the smallest flower to the beauty of the stars above His created beauty is everywhere.

For instance, just a couple of weeks ago I was sitting in one of my favorite marshy areas waiting for ducks to fly over and a Kingfisher landed right next to me.

I had never seen one before, and he just sat there until I took out my phone to get a picture, then he flew away.

It was like God was just showing off His creation and I was all alone to watch.

In fact NLT

I love the idea that God shows us His attributes and eternal power through His creation.

You would have to be pretty deceived to believe that all that we see, touch taste, smell, and hear was made from just a random bang.

But on the other hand however, how often do we hear of someone taking what God created and worshiping the creation and missing the creator all together.

Let me ask you a question; When was the last time you have been in AWE of God and His creation?

I believe that He wants to do this for each and every one of us, every day if we will only take the time to be still and know that He is God.

We spent quite a bit of time this morning talking about Gods wrath, and each of us know people, friends, family, neighbors and co workers who fall into the category of receiving this wrath some day, it might even be you?

gives us hope

Let’s pray